Cheering at The Joyce

What's the deal with that reported Google-sponsored free WiFi in Chelsea? I hoped to post my FOCUS DANCE observations and thoughts to Facebook and Twitter at intermission, but all I could find was a "Joyce Public" connection that hung for hours every time I typed just a few characters. Crazy.

Last night's presentation of Camille A. Brown & Dancers and Brian Brooks Moving Company at the APAP-targeted FOCUS DANCE at The Joyce got the audience cheering so vociferously I began to wonder if I hadn't slipped into a wormhole and ended up at City Center's Fall For Dance festival instead. The cheering sounded a little pre-planned, shall we say?

I will cheer, though--and loudly--for a couple of solos from this program.

Brian Brooks presented I'm Going to Explode, a signature piece from 2007 where the choreographer steps out (and flips out) of his character's mundane, buttoned-down existence and splinters into rapid-fire, thrashing, punishing movement. It's an amazing performance of physical control and endurance, one I never tire of seeing, just as I never tire of its accompanying music--"Losing My Edge" by LCD Soundsystem. (Yeah, I'm losing my edge...The kids are coming up from behind...the kids from France and from London, but I was there...I was there when Captain Beefheart started up his first band. I told him, "Don't do it that way. You'll never make a dime."...But have you seen my records?...Gil! Scott! Heron!)

Brown's half of the show also featured a distinguished solo--The Real Cool, an excerpt from her ensemble piece, Mr. TOL E. RAncE (2012). The solo works as a standalone item. Like Brooks, Brown has superb control of timing, weight, every last movement in this meditation on Black performing artists and stereotypical representations. A dancer with legendary skill and presence, Brown turns her character into a full-body mask. Its intelligent, fiery and sorrowful human spirit seems to float a few feet back from this animated shell. Eerie.

Other highlights on the bill: Brown's fun and feisty Been There, Done That (2010) duet with lovable Jule D. Lane (a Jacob's Pillow crowd-pleaser that, yes, this talented duo should work the hell out of as long as they can) and Brooks's duet, Fall Falls, some attractive, if inconsequential, slippery-do and swirling around with Wendy Whelan which exploits her malleable qualities without giving her much of a point for being there except to be Wendy Whelan, surely wonderful to indulge in (as dancemaker and as audience) but which, in the end, does not satisfy.

For information on the remaining FOCUS DANCE programs through January 13 at the Joyce--Rosie Herrera Dance Theater, Doug Varone and Dancers, Eiko & Koma and John Jasperse--click here and here.

The Joyce Theater
Eighth Avenue at 19th Street, Manhattan
(directions)

A warm(er) New York City welcome for APAP

This year, New York has welcomed the annual APAP (Association of Performing Arts Presenters) conference with the kind of "winter weather" that makes chasing down performances and showings all around town a whole lot easier than anticipated. I like that I can take post-dinner strolls across town to The Joyce for FOCUS DANCE--the series offered by Gotham Arts Exchange and the Joyce and curated, this year, by Jodee Nimerichter (director, American Dance Festival). I'll only get to the first two of FOCUS's four programs, but I'd like to shake the hand of the man or woman who can manage to get to everything invited to or, for that matter, worth seeing during APAP season.

Last night's show at the Joyce featured work by Jodi Melnick and Stephen Petronio. Melnick's Solo, Re(Deluxe), Version (2012), premiered last spring at New York Live Arts and set to the ecstatic, jagged chugging of Steven Reker's rock band, People Get Ready, finally came into focus and took off for me when the choreographer teamed up with another outstanding dancer, Hristoula Harakas. The two women proceeded to slip within and against the space with moves of silk and sophistication, switched on and attuned to one another's force and timing. Everything on that raw stage suddenly warmed up. It looked like love and intuition and mad stellar skill. Also, mad stellar are Gino Grenek and his fellow dancers from Stephen Petronio Company who offered excerpts from three sculpted pieces--Like Lazarus Did (LLD), a work in progress, The Architecture of Loss (2012) and Underland (2011). I'm always drawn to this ensemble's earth-angel quality: You can see how disciplined they are, but they show honor to the body and materiality--and humanity--by playing with gravity, never straining to escape it. Whatever they're dancing, they are sharing this specific time and place with us. Something so arresting and emotionally moving in this for me.

Tonight? Camille A. Brown & Dancers--to see where Brown's going with the provocative Mr. TOL E. RAncE--and Brian Brooks Moving Company (7:30 at The Joyce Theater). For information on the remaining FOCUS DANCE programs through January 13 at the Joyce--including work by Rosie Herrera Dance Theater, Doug Varone and Dancers, Eiko & Koma and John Jasperse--click here and here.

The Joyce Theater
Eighth Avenue at 19th Street, Manhattan
(directions)

A new year starts with APAP

Top, L-R: Bergen Wheeler, Douglas Gillespie, Leslie Kraus and Luke Murphy
in Kate Weare's Garden
Below, front: Leslie Kraus with Bergen Wheeler in Garden
Photos ©Keira Heu-Jwyn Chang

My illustrious guest for The Joyce Theater's second evening of Focus Dance, faced with no project to showcase for APAP this season, was jazzed about being able to run around seeing lots of stuff, just like the rest of us. "It's like New Year's Eve all over again!" she said--only one of many encouraging things she said--uttering what might be my motto for this APAP season and more. Every encounter, greeted with openness and genuine interest: Perhaps that could be a worthy New Year's resolution in dance and beyond dance.

If so, my first APAP event, Focus Dance--one of the latest in a cluster of APAP-related dance festivals--certainly snapped into focus with presentations by Kyle Abraham/Abraham.In.Motion and Kate Weare Company on their shared program on Wednesdav evening.

Weare's Garden is a keen, satisfying journey into what could be an alternate universe's sexually-fluid, seductive and treacherous Eden crafted by an alternate, wilder-minded Martha Graham. Weare's dancers, as always, are all gems but, as always, it's impossible to take your eyes off the two women--Leslie Kraus and Bergen Wheeler--whose performances are larger than life.

Scene from Kyle Abraham's Live!: The Realest MC
Photos ©Steven Schreiber

Abraham's company opens the Focus Dance evening with excerpts from Live!: The Realest MC, a dazzling, emotionally affecting ensemble on the complications of Black masculinity. It is this young choreographer's best effort to date. From the glittery costumes by Abraham and Kristi Wood to the rich, gorgeous lighting design by Dan Scully, this production holds together in a seamless system and  shows evidence of a bright artist who knows who he is and has something worth saying. His movement scheme draws ideas from popular culture without settling for the easy, familiar image. He always wants to find out what else he can do with it, what's underneath it, how it might look on a different body. And he has not stopped exploring new ways to cut and shape space. A wizard of a dancer in his own right, Abraham is joined here by a snazzy, diverse group of performers--Rena Butler, Chalvar Monteiro, Elyse Morris, Rachelle Rafailedes, Hsiao-Jou Tang and Maleek Malaki Washington--who I hope will stay and continue to grow right along with him.

If tickets are still available, don't miss the second and last Kyle Abraham/Kate Weare evening, this Sunday at 7:30pm. For information, click here.

The Joyce Theater

Eighth Avenue between 18th and 19th Streets, Manhattan

(directions)

Members of chelfitsch Theater Company
in Hot Pepper, Air Conditioner and the Farewell Speech

Photos ©Julie Lemberger 2012

Below: Mari Ando and Taichi Yamagata

chelfitsch Theater Company's return to Japan Society--as part of The Public Theater's notable APAP fest, Under The Radar is cause for celebration. And that's true even though Hot Pepper, Air Conditioner, and the Farewell Speech (2009)--a trio of nutty little workplace scenarios written and directed by Toshiki Okada--takes off from a boring, antiseptic environment that is anything but celebratory. I love the way these guys just smack woozy sound and banal, obsessive text up against fidgety, painfully askew movement in a depiction of a way of life that is seriously out of whack. Even so, their characters often have a charm that relieves the cartoonish abstraction. Trust me, it's all fun, and all expertly done--particularly the movement and particularly when Mari Ando and Taichi Yamagata do the Air Conditioner duet (photo above). Do not miss!

Seats are limited. Hurry to see chelfitsch at Japan Society now through January 14. For information, click here.

Japan Society
333 East 47th Street (between 1st and 2nd Avenues), Manhattan
(map/directions)

See my favorite things of 2011. Click here!